<p>Well, I'm a student at a community college here in Texas and I'm looking at my transfer options to see where I should go once I'm done here (also, helps a lot to try to play what classes to take so that I have a minimal loss in credit hours). Basically I'm looking at two choices right now -- either Texas A&M (which has more or less guaranteed admission for me if I take the right classes and maintain a good GPA at this community college) or UT Austin (which is the other one I was looking at.) I wouldn't mind going to a much fancier top tier school (MIT, Caltech, etc :|) , but I'm really doubting that I have the right kind of credentials for those places. I don't have much (read: none) for awards or community service and I'm seeing that those are unfortunately fairly big things when applying. So, the question is... UT or A&M... or what other suggestions would you people have?</p>
<p>Just one opinion: I don't think awards and community service are nearly as important for transfer applications as your academic success in college, your test scores, what you have done outside of class to show your interests and passions, your recs and essays.</p>
<p>I have no idea if you are a real candidate for such schools as MIT or CalTech, but I wouldn't suggest you make that judgement based on community service or "awards."</p>
<p>what you have done outside of class to show your interests and passions, your recs and essays.</p>
<p>Well heh, the interests and passions thing is what's bad since I really have very few that would stand out. Stuff like that is why I don't really think that I would even be close to any top tier institutions. Unless I start working on doing all of that now and have something to show for it in two years. Does anyone have suggestions for stuff like that? My community college has a fairly small engineering program so I'm sure I'll either get to be buddy-buddy with all of the engineering staff or be hated by them so those could be my recommendations. Writing isn't exactly my forte, but I can grind away at the essays until they're passable. So then all that's left is to show that I'm some kind of a unique butterfly that should be accepted. What kind of things would an engineering program look for?</p>
<p>My best friend attend UT-A and I recall she was a bit thin on the ec's but had a great GPA and so she was admitted. Good luck! :)</p>